


Close As Brothers

by strongfemaleprotagonist



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Season 3 Finale, Season/Series 03 Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-02
Updated: 2014-04-02
Packaged: 2018-01-17 23:14:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,125
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1406173
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/strongfemaleprotagonist/pseuds/strongfemaleprotagonist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"That night...you were really going to do it, weren't you? You were willing to- to let me-" The words catch on his tongue but he forces them forward. "You were willing to let me kill you."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Close As Brothers

**Author's Note:**

> I had a lot of feelings about the Nogitsune's command for Scott to kill Stiles. I wanted to give the boys a chance to deal with that. Enjoy!

They've always been close, but after the Nogitsune is captured, Stiles and Scott become even closer. Like, rarely out of sight, mandatory regular physical contact close. Part of it is that Scott is so relieved to have Stiles, his best friend, his brother, back with him, fully and corporeally himself. The other part is deeper, something older, beginning to articulate in the wake of tragedy.

The first night, after the dust cleared, after they’d gathered themselves into shaky acceptance, they all went to Scott’s house: Lydia, Kira, Isaac, Stiles. None of them could face going home alone. They wanted to be sure they were all really there, the ones who’d made it through. That night they sat up in Scott’s bedroom, barely speaking, and nobody wanted to sleep, just huddled together, laying reassuring touches, too exhausted to cry. Scott held Stiles’ hand all night and when we awoke from fitful sleep, he was wrapped around his friend, arms tight enough to bruise. 

Sleepovers have always been commonplace between them, but now they’ve become a nightly event, accidental, even, as they fall easily into sleep together after an afternoon together, every day lately after school. Their parents understand. The loss of Allison aches like an abscess, smarts like a wound stretched and slow to heal. They need to fill it, to attempt seamless friendship, as if they could generate from their love a surrogate for Allison’s presence, for her grace, her dauntless devotion. 

They don’t talk as much as they used to, because neither of them knows how to begin, knows how to pick back up their banter in this fractured dialogue. They are different now, different in the same way maybe, but they don’t yet know which way and they don’t know what it sounds like. So they cradle one another in sleep, and pretend not to hear the other cry, but move a bit closer, try to absorb the reverberations of sadness into their own bodies.  

Sometimes it seems like it can't be real. Mid-sleep, Scott wakes drenched with a throbbing pressure in his chest, his arms empty, convinced Stiles is still possessed, that the past few weeks have just been another one of the fox’s illusions. With his eyes still gaining focus in the dark, he seeks out his friend's sleeping form where he’s fallen asleep in a chair, as calm as it was before the nightmares began, when the only thing keeping Stiles awake was an early morning chem test he had to study for. Scott wonders if their worries will ever be that simple again.

\----

Today they’re at Scott’s, half-studying for a history test that neither of them care about, really, but it keeps a pleasant hum of their voices between them, a stream of flashcard answers to give context to their comfortable proximity. Melissa is downstairs making dinner, a place for Stiles already set at the table. 

It’s been a month today since that night, and Scott knows that Stiles knows it too, has been keeping track in his own head. They’ve talked about it vaguely, in references, to “what happened” and “when I wasn’t me,” but never head-on, always slanted, flinching away from it like those dark specters can still hurt them. But there’s something that’s been on Scott’s mind, a moment that he knows both of them would rather forget. Still, before he flips to the next flashcard, he pauses. 

“Hey, Stiles?”

Stiles looks up, concerned, from where he’s laying across Scott’s legs. “Yeah, buddy? You know, I don’t think we need to know the exact dates of all the battles in the Spanish Civil War, if that’s what you’re worried about. I mean, I think--” 

“It’s um, not about the test,” Scott says, blinking away from his friend’s eyes. “It’s about that night.”

Stiles swallows, takes a wavering breath. “Oh.”

It’s hard to know how he should broach it, this part of something they’ve avoided discussing for so long. He focuses hard on the patterns of his bedcover. "Stiles, uh, you know I never would have- but-" He breaks off, fatigued. "That night...you were really going to do it, weren't you? You were willing to- to let me-" The words catch on his tongue but he forces them forward. "You were willing to let me kill you." He can’t get the image to stop playing in his head, Stiles with the katana poised at his abdomen, shaking but sure, ready to plunge it through.  

When he raises his head, Stiles  is looking up at him, alert, one hand on Scott's. From shock, his eyes turn soft but assured. "Yes," he finally says. "I would have let you take the sword to my neck-" Scott flinches, but Stiles continues, his free hand finding Scott's neck, his thumb on the pulse point. "-without a doubt. You know that I trust you with my life, Scott."

The air rushes out from between them as Scott's mouth moves to meet Stiles', a quick, sure movement like he's following a path drawn out, succumbing to an old habit, like it's the only thing he _can_ do. Stiles hesitates for the barest of moments before he’s kissing Scott back, moving with equal parts desperation and assurance, and it feels like all the words they can’t say, all the things they know and remember, together and apart, familiar but terrifying. 

He’s pulling on Scott’s lip, pushing their chests tight against each other, trying to get closer than close, hands splayed along Scott’s spine, now seeking with his tongue and Scott growls low and sweeps Stiles underneath him. The kiss deepens, transforms, like a story becoming more complicated in the telling. Their mouths and bodies collide with both swiftness and clarity, carelessness and precision. They know each other somehow, on an anatomic level, Scott moving his hands in the exact spot on Stiles’ hip that makes his breath quicken and grab Scott feverishly closer, Stiles finding the perfect leverage for his leg that expels a moan from Scott and makes him realize just how much he needs this.

Finally, Scott breaks contact with a flick of his tongue, and places a lingering kiss on his best friend’s collarbone, then lays his head to rest there, against the cadence of his heart. There’s a long release of breath between them. 

He should say something, but instead he lifts himself up, kisses the lids of Stiles’ closed eyes, the hollows of his cheeks, the tensed muscle of his neck, the dip of his throat. He settles his body snug against Stiles’, feeling every bone and pulse in their bodies align. Stiles puts his arms around him, an assurance, a promise. Soon Melissa will call them for dinner, but by that time they’ll be deep in sleep.


End file.
